“We could have done a fine job on our own [with Metroid Other M], but we saw Team Ninja as a way to add a little extra ‘special sauce’, if you will.

“One of the pieces of feedback I’ve heard since is that when we made that announcement, there were a lot of development teams and publishers who started to say to themselves: ‘Wow! Nintendo is open to these partnerships. Let’s think of other ideas that we can bring forward.’ I find that exciting.”